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Talk:European Alliance/@comment-109.209.96.205-20130628143707/@comment-75.37.2.123-20130701205012
Even in the late game, the Tiger (nevermind the Bengal Tiger) was so rare it isn't even funny. It had an importance and influence far out of proportion to its' numbers, but the bumb truth is that it and the Panthers were insanely rare in the German tank fleet, to say nothing of the Axis Tank Fleet overall. Most of the Germans were still struggling with various models of Panzer IVs or IIIs, which were at *best* the equals of British (and American, and other Allied) tanks. It's probably true that on the whole, the Germans had an edge in armored warfare, but not by that much. People focus on Villers-Bocage so much they forget things like the Firefly killing off several Tigers in one sitting, to name just one. In terms of early-game superiority, even that's a bit disputable. Everybody had a *lot* of cruddy tanks laying around. For some unfortunate sods (like the Dutch) that was all they had, and so they went down by default. For the main players in 1940 (British, French, Germans), I'd agree that the former probably slightly edged out the latter in terms of quality and quantity overall. However, it's worth noting that the gap was not by that much. After all, when we say "Matilda" we are *really* saying "Matilda Mk. II" because the Matilda Mark One was a decently impenetrible hulk of metal and a machine gun, and so fine at infantry support but bad at everything else. And there were plenty of British designs with even less promising material then that, DItto with the French and their (to name just one) fleet of FT-17s still around. Overall, the Western Allies probably had better tank types, but the average quality of the German tank was higher on the average because their stuff tended to at least be modern. But the skill and doctrine definitely made up the difference. The early war Soviet Tank Corps I have very little good to say about. They had even more deadweight then the West, and a lot of them worked even less than the others. The T-34 was a mid/late game edition, and the KVs were formidable in a straight up fight but tended to be poorly used, implausible to go around, and generally too sluggish to win when they needed to. If I'm really generous, the KV line were better than the III and the early IVs, and the equal of the main IVs. Ditto with the T-34s, which were about average for the usual IVs, but early in the war the Soviets had an absolute *plethora* of functionally useless tanks against the Germans, which we don't see as much simply because natural selection saw them blown apart relatively early on with extreme prejudice. Agreed overall for the causes of Germany's decline in armored warfare, though on the whole I'm not sure their late game tanks were that much more superior to equivalent Allied armor on the whole as some would believe. Agreed regarding Britain knowing war, and about Prussia being it as well. that being said, while Frederic (the only Frenchman to be King of Prussia.... or at least so he'd wish) definitely made Prussia into a major power, his successors kinda dropped the ball in a major way. The Prussia we think of when we're talking about this was actually the product of a later military revolution that went into place in the Napoleonic Wars, after Frederic's model was utterly pulvurized by the French at Jena-Auerstadt, making it necessary to revise it into what Bismarck, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff would use. And which is presumably (though not for very good reasons, as I'll mention later) the core of the European Alliance military. As for Hitler's gamble, it's true he did advocate that, but his sincerity's at best dubious when talking about non-Nazi satilite states. He certainly hated the Soviets and Eastern Europeans with a passion, and he did indeed intend to form a sort of greater European order under German supremacy. However, he generally placed that after the "Conquer Western Europe and put up friendly regimes" stage of his "plan." I doubt he'd turn down a grand coalition if he was offered it, but he also never really gave it that much thought. As for how this is relevant to MoW? Well, that depends, but I'm not sure. Offhand, it certainly is an issue if we have debates over what units take what in-game, and for the sake of balance and fluff building. The very presence of the British and French in this alliance raise points, and in my opinion issues. In particular, it's a balancing issue to try and keep the historical units (The Churchills, the Lees, the KV-2s, etc) true. Or at least plausibly true. As for the European Alliance being the product of a "Don't fight me, fight THEM!" Gambit ala the Hitler example? Yeaaah... I don't see it exactly. Or at least, I don't even remotely see it with Germany anywhere near dominant like I get the impression it is. Why? Because frankly, the German Imperial regime would have even *less* credibility than Hitler did when he was yammering off about that. If they wanted to do it, it would've had to happen under Bismarck's era when he still had his Concert of Europe or at least League of the Three Emperors, but that's gone. The German Kaiserreich basically murdered a friendly (which is stupid and makes them unreliable allies) head of state (which is a big no-no by the rules of the "game" of war and politics) and fellow absolute monarch (which is regicide and morally abhorrent by their logic) in alliance with a bunch of anarchist/socialist terrorists (which makes them willing to make deals with the devil even more than they did with Lenin IRL). Which resulted in the formation of a rival totalitarian state, espousing Communism as a direct ideological threat to absolutely everybody else, who then proceeded to invade everybody else; making them responsible for everybody else's problems. The German government would have *absolutely* no credibility after doing that. They would not be granted the crown of heading up the defense of the West and Europe by the rest of the continent. They would be ''eaten alive ''by the people with bones to pick with them (who are numerous), their former allies (after all, how is Franz Josef supposed to be reassured by them when they already murdered another friendly Emperor?), and large segments of their own people. Which'd probably see the European Alliance shift to being dominated by the major Western European nations. Probably Britain, *France* (Taking advantage of this to revise the results of 1871), Italy, and Scandinavia (Ditto but for the Holstein Wars). Of course, that means we'd probably have to make substantial revisions in the game about this faction's design, about the backstory, and why the UR turned its' back on the EA in this version because there's a lack of the ideological hangups that would have.....